Warts, Schwartz, And All
5
I no longer have that script, but it was written as All-Star Comics #58 (surprise, surprise), continuing the numbering of my all-time favorite comic, which had been discontinued in 1950. The basic premise and plotline of “The War That Never Happened!” was unabashedly lifted from a story of the same name and general story in Wonder Woman #60 (July-Aug. 1953). In my scenario, the JSA (expanding on Diana’s role in the original) are called in by the scientist Paula. In her “futuray,” which seems basically a souped-up version of Queen Hippolyta’s Magic Sphere, they behold images of an Earth reduced to rubble by World War III, ten years in the future. The All-Stars travel all the way to 1964 or ’65 to fight on America’s side, breaking into teams as per the later SchwartzBroome All-Stars. I took my tale’s climax nakedly from the original comic, with Wonder Woman finding a way to stop the war from ever beginning: She prevents an auto accident which had kept US delegates from getting to a crucial conference in time to vote against going to war. (Hey, don’t blame me! I didn’t write the original story—chances are Bob Kanigher did! But I liked it.) I had fun writing the script, but I doubt I ever showed it to anyone.
B. Jerry Thomas Lives! As it happens, the second unillustrated script I remember writing was actually submitted (unsolicited) to DC—to editor Julius Schwartz, to be precise. The cover and panels from five stories in All Giant Comics #1, done when RT was seven, with Elephant Giant, King O’Mighty, Goliath, Giant Caveman (wearing Flash’s helmet), and Black Giant. [©2001 Roy Thomas; like anybody’s gonna steal it!]
company; and the Timely/Marvel “Big Three” of Captain America, Human Torch, and Sub-Mariner, whom in 1975 I combined as The Invaders. Besides ideas involving Golden Age heroes, however, there are a few others on my list—pet proposals involving the Justice League, the KreeSkrull War, and one or two additional bits of flotsam and jetsam from my four-color past, as you’ll see.
As a few doddering oldsters may recall, in Jerry G. Bails’ original 1961 Alter-Ego fanzine, at age twenty, I wrote and drew a parody of the JLA called “Bestest League of America.” Later, in Justice League of America #16 (Dec. 1962), Julie and author Gardner Fox paid Jerry and me
But let’s start back in the ’40s and ’50s, when the very idea that I would one day be a professional comic book writer and/or editor would have been an “impossible dream” project, in and of itself...
Part I WARTS, SCHWARTZ, AND ALL A. All-Star Comics #58—Two Decades Early! Though I drew my first crudely-executed comics in 1948 at age seven—a multi-story, 50-page All Giant Comics, one of whose heroes, Goliath, was visually based on the depiction of that Biblical bad-guy in the then-recent All-Star Comics #38—my first attempt to write a script, as opposed to both writing and drawing a story, was made in 1954 or ’55. Ostensibly, the major subject of Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer’s 1954 Comic Book Illustrators Instruction Course, Lesson One (and, as it turned out, Only), was drawing the human head. But it also sported examples of two panels in script form, which I used as my template. (For this and other pages of the Course, see Alter Ego: The Comic Book Artist Collection, currently available from TwoMorrows.)
Irwin Hasen drew the cover of Wonder Woman #60. Inside, “The War That Never Happened!”—whose history-altering denouement is shown here—was the work of a tiring H.G. Peter. The 1953 issue was reprinted in 1977—as a premium given away by Pizza Hut! A zillion thanks to collector Bart Bush for gifting Roy with what amounts to a copy of a comic he hadn’t owned or even seen in nearly half a century! [©2001 DC Comics.]